


Reunion

by feraldogstiel



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Minor Violence, Wings, flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-06
Updated: 2007-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:12:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feraldogstiel/pseuds/feraldogstiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the near Apocalypse, Aziraphale is reassigned to a new post in America, and a millenium passes without Crowley...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> As an artist as well as a writer, I have a fascination with wings. Good Omens got me thinking again about all the possibilities wings offer in way of expression and movement, and this is the result of the images that popped up in my head. Hopefully this will eventually also result in illustration for this piece, though if anyone else is interested or knows someone who may be interested in undertaking that little piece of fanart as well, I say feel free. I'd absolutely love to see it.

On that day, Aziraphale realized he had been starting to feel… restless? It didn't exactly pinpoint the emotion, but it would do for that moment, while he tried to figure out how this had come to happen. Sitting alone on the dry earth, he stretched snow-white wings, trying to relieve the stiffness which came from having them folded for too long. He needed to relax (after all, that was what this short break was supposed to be for, wasn't it?) but was disappointed to find that the scanty shade the battered desert bush offered was hardly enough to even half-protect his plumage from the sun. He tucked his wings back behind himself, sighed, and looked up at the sky.

The sun blazed, as it usually did in the dry, barren parts of the world, the parts that even the overcrowded human population was reluctant to habitat. The sky, however was a perfect clear and cloudless blue. He couldn't have miracled a better one.

He remembered a day when the sky had been red. But that had been nearly a thousand years ago, and he hadn't thought on most of the details of the near-Apocalypse in a long time. There was no reason to. He and Crowley had averted the disaster (or rather, had been present when Adam told Up There and Down There off for being quite senseless) and had gone their separate ways. Crowley had been returned to Hell for reprimands, Aziraphale reassigned in a new part of the globe.

It wasn't that America was boring. Aziraphale had no trouble discovering new sights, places, and experiences in the vast continent. It was intriguing to him how greatly one seaboard could differ from the other when they belonged to the same governing country. That Brooklyn could be juxtaposed with Manhattan when it was all New York City.

Nor was it that he had nothing to do. With the American population five times that of "back home" in England, there were five times as many souls to save, five times as many miracles to perform, and five times as many first edition books to collect… to be resold eventually, of course. The angel's assignments had taken him from oil spills in Alaska to the formation of a new church in Wyoming. He had miraculously averted a flood in the Midwest and gone to hospitals in Maine to bless infants in the nurseries.

His current task at hand was an exorcism. Somewhere in the middle of Death Valley, California, a wandering snake had bitten a traveling family's young son. It had been too late for the boy by the time an airlift had gotten him to a hospital. Demon venom proved very swiftly fatal in humans.

Aziraphale wasn't at all put off by this assignment. His basic nature told him that demons were deadly, perverse, and immoral creatures who would just as soon tear an angel's wings off as look at them. There had been dozens of times before when he'd been locked in battle, painfully aware of his foe's mercilessness as feathers were stripped away from his wings, gashes torn into his skin by raking claws. Demons were his instinctive enemies. Anthony J. Crowley was the sole exception to that rule, and even then, they had fought bitterly for millennia preceding the world's Creation before discovering they were too evenly matched to continue at it that way. This had made conversation possible, and some time after they discovered that rival factors could indeed have something in common.

Crowley… Aziraphale wondered how he was getting on now, back in Hell. Undoubtedly not well, he decided. His reprimand and the corresponding torture aside, the dominant lifestyle of Hell simply wasn't fitting for that particular demon. A little too much brimstone and not enough plants to terrorize. Besides, Crowley had always been happier when he was out in the world doing… well, not so much evil, but mischief anyways.

Aziraphale had always been happier when… really, he wasn't sure. He was still doing the same things he'd done for thousands of years, indulged in the same tastes, performed just as well at his post, remained hopelessly oblivious to some of the finer points of the human world around him. So then why should he feel so down?

The angel sighed. Crowley would have said that-

And then it hit him. He wasn't restless. He wasn't tired or bored with his Heavenly responsibilities. He was lonely. All those years when all the other angels were lounging around in the Elysian Fields they had plenty of opportunity to get to know each other, make friends among allies. Aziraphale had been on Earth. Crowley, an enemy, was his only friend. And now he was gone, and (if the greater part of a thousand years was any indication of the future) not likely to return.

The angel frowned, troubled. No wonder he felt so low. It had always been more satisfying performing a Miracle when there was a good-naturedly sarcastic remark following the act. Now, he could scarcely remember what the demon had looked like. He had a vague idea of smoke-colored wings, dark hair, and the glint of fangs. But that was all demons, nothing to build a distinctive image of Crowley on.

A pensive moment longer, and the thought of other demons prodded him back to the task at hand. The demon he'd been tracking was somewhere nearby. He could feel it. He stood, hefting his sword into its place on his back, firmly between his wings, and checked a set of small daggers at his belt. The sword would be his primary weapon once he had the demon where he wanted him, but it was impractical at close range against a demon's claws. By carrying both, he was better prepared, more likely to win the fight.

But demons often had the element of surprise on their side.

Aziraphale spread his wings and took to the air, graceful as a swan. He kept fairly low to the ground, flying slowly- faster than he could walk, but slow enough to where the ground wasn't merely a blur as it passed under him and he scanned for traces of the demon. Strangely, he could feel the demon's presence continually intensifying, yet there was nothing to be seen below but endless dust. Until a small and brilliantly green snake slithered out from a split in the cracked earth.

Aziraphale started, hurriedly tilted his widespread wings backward to stop his forward momentum, and began to circle around for a second look. He turned, hovered there a moment, rocking slightly from powerful downbeats of his wings, searching the ground around him. There wasn't any sign of the serpent.

Not a second later, something very large and very solid slammed into him full-force from above, trying to knock him out of the sky.

Sent off balance, weighted by his sword, Aziraphale tumbled downwards a moment, looking back above to catch a glimpse of a few of his own white feathers, lost in the attack, floating lazily back down to Earth behind him. Their fluffy light forms were reverse-silhouetted against a dark predatory form hovering ominously even further above, backlit by the sun and with wings the color of storm clouds.

The angel clenched his teeth, drew the daggers, forced protesting flight muscles to right himself, and rushed into battle.

The demon dove at him, tucking smoky feathers tightly against his sides to plummet deadly-fast at his target. Aziraphale rushed upwards in erratic wingbursts, rising rapidly to meet his foe, the daggers lanced out before him.

With a sickening crack of colliding wing bones, they came together, dark and light feathers spurting in all directions from the impact. The hellion swept claws across Aziraphale's side and he sunk a dagger into the demon's shoulder and had another at its throat to prevent biting. As tangled wings do not lend themselves well to flying, this stance did not last long as they'd started plummeting downward. Each pushed off from the other, inflicting as much damage as possible in the progress, and shot upward again.

Spiraling and weaving around their opponent as they soared skyward, each lashed out when they came near, tearing skin, pulling out delicate plumage. The angel caught a nasty snarl and a glint of yellow eyes flashing before his eyes before a shadow passed over him and landed heavily on his back. It was the worst position he could possibly be in.

He was aware he was propelling both of them now, then of sharp-clawed toes scrabbling at and digging into his hips for purchase, and finally a sharp, fiery pain as one wing was twisted unnaturally upwards, manipulated by demonic hands. This caused Aziraphale to cry out in pain, but fortunately also caused him to pitch suddenly sideways. The figure on his back lost its grip and starting to slide away, made a grab for anything it could, succeeding in only slashing both palms open as they found Aziraphale's sword.

The devilish creature fell away, his own tainted wings not having been opened, which gave Aziraphale a moment to catch his breath. His right wing screamed out horribly in pain as he strained to move it quickly enough to keep himself aloft, but at least it still worked. He didn't have time to think much further than this before the demon rocketed upwards to assault the angel from below, and then they were somersaulting through the hot air. The combatants were forcefully battering each other with powerful wings and landing any blows they could as the ground flashed dizzily in and out of their line of sight, jumping closer each time.

Aziraphale suddenly pulled up, earning himself a set of nasty gashes from shoulder to elbow, but not without clipping away some of the more essential of the death-gray feathers. The demon had a very hard time stopping his fall without them, and narrowly missed slamming into the dust. Realizing he had been effectively slowed down, he snarls up at the angel, the gleam of fangs visible even at that height. But he wasn't finished yet and began struggling back to a higher altitude. Aziraphale drew his sword, dropping one dagger strategically to tear across the demon's cheek as it fell earthward.

His opponent came level with him, yellow snake's eyes narrowed as he hissed nastily, glaring. The demon was bleeding heavily and his wings were in bad shape, but Aziraphale did not register this as an advantage over the hellish being. He was in an equally poor condition. He raised the sword and set it aflame to strike, but as they both hovered there staring the other down, each came to a slow conclusion…

"…Crowley?"

"'Zira!"

The sword was dropped, forgotten (not for the first time over the last millennia) as they came together excitedly, the wing blows now accidental and almost playful.

"Where have you been, my dear?!"

Crowley tried to shrug in a nonchalant manner, but was far too thrilled to pull it off correctly. Aziraphale didn't count it against him.

"Hell. Where did you think? Got to be properly scolded, you know."

"For a thousand years?"

"The sentence read '997,' if I remember right, angel."

Aziraphale sobered up a bit.

"I thought you were never coming back… I'd almost forgotten you, you know."

"Yeah, well…" Crowley mumbled, somewhat awkwardly. "Shouldn't happen again, as long as I 'keep my performance up.'"

"You should have no trouble with that, old boy."

The angel batted at him jokingly with a wing. Crowley cuffed him in return and this started a good-natured battle that fairly frolicked across the desert sky, so pleased were they with their reuniting. Crowley flew slower but hit harder as they cartwheeled delightedly through the troposphere, tumbling as happily as kittens in a yarn factory. They soared around each other in huge looping spirals, and even Crowley forgot how silly he looked in the midst of the bantering war, grinning with fangs exposed as he tripped Aziraphale up with a well-placed and forceful flap of his wings.

Finally, exhausted, they angled toward the ground again and landed (and the angel laughed as Crowley stumbled, overestimating his landing speed because of the clipped feathers), coming to stand facing each other, close enough so that the tips of their outstretched wings touched and a few feathers in between intermingled gray with white.

"I missed you," Aziraphale stated.

"I know."

Crowley pressed wings gently against the angel's and Aziraphale pushed back, bringing them closer though their bodies never moved.

"I'm glad you're back, my dear."

"So'm I."

Aziraphale suddenly drew Crowley in for a crushing, exuberant hug, and hesitating a moment, Crowley did the same, matching Aziraphale with a strength worthy of a friendship as old as theirs. Silky grayness enveloped the angel as Crowley's wings went around him as well, initiating an "angel's hug" (and Crowley in Aziraphale's mind was still an angel even if he had Fallen and his wings were the color of ash; he was just a little misguided), shrouding him in a happy warmth even along with the darkness. He wrapped the demon in his own wings, completing the ethereal embrace and sealing them both off from the rest of the world, earthly and spiritual, in a cocoon of soft feathers.

It was as it always had been, and it was all they'd ever known or needed to. And in that moment, both bruised and missing feathers and smeared with blood, both sore with the fatigue of flight and battle, they were content.


End file.
